Man Fears Time. Time Fears the Sphinx.

-Arabic Proverb


Finally, my chance to pair up Two and Three with a really juicy problem. This is a braided tie-in from all sorts of directions; Planet of the Spiders, The Dalek Invasion of Earth; War Games, The Three Doctors; The Five Doctors; Trial of a Time Lord; The Two Doctors; Downtime; Season 6B and then some. Ties in to my ficanon: Anam Cara, TIDERAKER, THE POWERS OF TWO, and BETWEEN THE WALLS OF THE WORLDS. Prose Canon has it the dying Third Doctor wandered quite a while, lost, before finally returning to UNIT after defeating the Great One. There's also the obvious fact that Two is noticeably older between The Five Doctors (without Jamie and Zoe), and then he's suddenly back with Jamie and VIctoria (THE TWO DOCTORS). Lastly, we never got a nice explanation for Susan's fate and why she is clearly prosperous in war-torn post-2164 London after the Daleks creamed the whole city.

Each Doctor gets a drabble for each chapter. It starts with Three, then Two's drabble follows after. Soon enough they'll collide with each other, and, professional agents of chaos that they are, they'll only do a little bickering before they settle down to the real business at hand.


Metabelis III

The Great One's screams raked his mind, her subsonic death-flails burning his flesh and already wounded psyche. The big man stumbled without his normal grace to the console, falling into it. His vision blurred and spun out of control. This would have instantly killed a smaller Time Lord, he knew, thinking of his otherselves.

Sarah Jane. The Brigadier. A friendship too-long lost and finally just salvaging...

His own honour wouldn't let him betray them with his absence. They deserved to know.

He'd spent his exile constructively, taking apart his TARDIS and putting her back together, bolt by bolt and cell by cell. The hours of hard work had rewarded him with a master's understanding of her workings unparalleled by any of his otherselves. He knew her better than he knew himself.

Knew she would take him home to die.

He sank to his knees, his weight supported by the console, and, taking a deep breath for strength, the Doctor pressed the Return command. He was unconscious as she wheezed out of the caverns. But the Great One's screams of pain and madness stayed with him.


2: 22nd-Century Earth:

The blast that knocked him flying was no less impressive as the outraged roar of its instigator. Ears ringing, the little Time Lord staggered up, slipping on the crumbly scoil of the wounded city. His skin stung from rockshards; shale-dust coated his mouth and throat. He coughed and blinked, trying to see through a blur before realizing the blur was really a rolling fog.

Oh, not that fog again...

He struggled to run.

"Doctor!" The scream chilled his hearts. "You cannot escape!" A floodlight burst through the thickening atmosphere, and the white tendrils coiled away from it, scalded by the brightness. It regained itself and grew in strength, pulling moisture from the shattered pools of stagnant rainwater. "Find him, my Haar! Find the Doctor! He's stolen the Helm!"

"Oh, no." The Doctor gasped, weary to the bone from too much running and fighting. The Haar never needed to rest, being an atmospheric life-form, and its commander had been living off the fat of the land at the expense of the Dalek-torn populace.

All that would end by dawn if he could keep the Haar from the Helm...He ran for his TARDIS, hoping he would be fast enough...